Anonymous Services - Can We Get A List Going And Feedback?

Well Das, I certainly trust your verdict as one who's done a lot of research on this subject. In fact you kind of pioneered this entire movement (or, this thread, anyway). So Boleh gets thrown into the mix of recommended anonymity solutions. That was one I was looking at as well, but after iVPN I had no reason to keep looking. If I had the $ and patience I would have tried more.

So between you, 0stro & myself, recommended solutions are (alphabetical):

Anonyproz (VPN)
BolehVPN (VPN)
iVPN (VPN)

Free solutions:

Mullvad (VPN)
TOR (Proxy)
Ixquick (Search engine/proxy)

It was indeed a difficult task finding a solid solution. I figured they'd all be pretty much the same, and just a matter of picking/trusting one. I couldn't believe how many flat out didn't even respond to emails, or threw up other red flags. Seemingly endless choices whittled themselves down to only a few very quickly. In the end, between the 3 of us we find only 3 things that really fit the bill. As you said, that's not to say there aren't others, they just make themselves scarce.

 

Anonyproz never replied to an email I sent them, so I would not bother with them...

iVPN did reply to a lot of emails, they seemed very helpful and friendly, but I still hold some doubt because they claimed to be leading professionals in the industry but they won't tell you anything about themselves...

Leading Professionals don't need to hide, so I still have doubts...

With BolehVPN you know who they are and where they are and they have a very active online forum community...

Right now I'll only pick one, "BolehVPN"...

I am testing another VPN, but they are going through a change and starting up, so there are some issues, but if they can get past them, then I will later mention them, so keep your fingers crossed...

Cheers

 

Well the people I conversed with at iVPN let me know exactly who they were too. Not sure what kind of info. you wanted that they didn't provide? But anyway, there are vendors that let you know exactly who they are, and are as untrustworthy as they come. I won't mention any names. So not the best barometer I'd say.

And I can understand why some didn't want to respond to your 45 question long emails. That is kind of excessive. The person at Swiss VPN was rude, and that's uncalled for, but it's no surprise that many of them didn't bother to respond. But some of mine were 2-3 questions, and I go no response. That's a flat out sign of bad customer service.

There's only 1 choice for me as well

 

I said they didn't let me know who they are.

Look at their HOME page, see what it says?

"Designed by leading security professionals"

So I wanted to know who these LEADING professionals were and they wouldn't tell me, that's very unprofessional.

Anyone can toss words around, but to call yourself LEADING, means you are a leader that excels in your chosen profession as one of the TOPS, or pretty darn close to it and because of those words, leading professionals don't need to hide, this was my point I explained before...

Now for the help I've been trying to give you, you make inaccurate statements towards me which isn't exactly being very nice, not sure where you came up with this 45 questions in emails, which seems like you're now bashing on me which I don't appreciate for all the help...

I only ask people a few questions...

 

Calm down, you're reading too much into this. You yourself posted a long list of questions you claimed to be sending to potential VPN providers. If memory serves it was over 40 questions long. And I can understand why some of them didn't respond to it. That's not bashing, I'm just being honest.

Your help (as with any) was appreciated, but at some point I felt like you were acting as if your "opinions" were gospel. And you seemed to find fault in everything I was doing. I followed my own path based on my observations, just as you have. And through my experimentation (as with another poster in here) found that the Swedish VPN's you were touting exhibited suspicious network activity. In the end there was only 1 real choice.

To each his/her own.

 

Thanks for the various write ups. Based on the positive reviews here, I have signed up with iVPN and so far, it has been great! Wish I had done this long ago.. They actually respond to questions, and have given 10/10 service so far.

I had previously held on to hope that Xerobank would turn things around. But after months (years?) of waiting, it's time to move on. Damn it Steve, if only you can respond to posters on the XB forum and/or follow through with announcements, customers might stay!

 

I'm calm, it's just the way you worded it is all...

We talked about a lot of questions here on Wilders, but when I would contact a VPN I would ask a few...

Sorry, wasn't trying to find fault in everything you were doing and my thoughts are certainly not the gospel just an observation of what I've experienced to share with others...

As for the Swedish VPNs, I was praising, actually the Country location, that Sweden, as far as their acts of Piracy Fighting in the past, would still, hopefully make it a good choice. I did point out some Swedish VPNs, but if memory serves me correct, I wasn't taking sides with any of them, again, pointing out the Country actually...

So who was your choice, iVPN?

Keep us posted on the progress of your VPN...

Cheers...

 

Maybe we were both reading between the lines too much. I apologize for my part, and I don't want this thread to devolve into petty bickering and end up closed, as I believe it can help a lot of people.

Your help was/is appreciated. Boleh was one that I wanted to try out too. Your account confirms what I suspected and read about it, that it's a top notch service. The forum does look very helpful too. But after my experience with iVPN I just had no reason to keep looking. Yeah, that's who I ended up going with.

Maybe I'll have to give them a test run after my year of iVPN runs out, but the bar has been set very high.

 

No worries all is good...

Glad iVPN is working out, but do keep us posted how it goes, any glitches or good things you encounter along the way...

Cheers

 

Here are some more VPNs I've come across;

http://hostizzle.com/ - Offers Free service...

VPNinja - http://vpninja.com/

https://privacy.io/

vpnv6 - http://vpnv6.com/ - Get a ipv6 address...

Kebrum - https://kebrum.com/

IAPS - https://www.intl-alliance.com/

Overplay - https://www.overplay.net/

Purevpn - http://purevpn.com/

 

Anyone going to gather all this into a huge list? Thanks, by the way, for all your contributions.

 

Thanks for the list, DasFox.

Hostizzle, VPNinja, vpnv6, Kebrum, IAPS, Overplay, and Purevpn all keep logs, and will likely terminate your account for petty violations like DMCA complaints. IAPS might be "fun" if you just want a novelty IP address in some exotic country, but unfortunately they are useless from a privacy/anonymity standpoint, for the aforementioned reason.

Privacy.io looks like it might be the only one in the group that's legit--at least at first glance. This one might be worthwhile to do some further research on.

 

Privacy.io still uses PPTP. The only thing that seems to have changed is that their site is now in Germany instead of Netherlands and they have acquired a server in Sweden.

http://www.bwprivacy.to/
They require nothing for account creation, not even an email. There is an internal messaging system for customers. The site is hosted in Romania and they currently have servers in Russia and Ukraine with some other offshore locations on the horizon. Interestingly, they use Safe-mail.net for pre-sales contact.

http://nvpn.net/
The other one I would use if I used VPNs. Site is hosted in France. I believe they have a Ukraine server in a private members area, but the Serbia host is faster than either this or Russia and is probably unique among VPNs since the owner got it as a special one-off deal.

 

Mullvad offers free accounts?

 

Dogbiscuit: If you go back a page and look, I gave a detailed run down of how to get Mullvad to work for free. It's right near that post of mine you quoted.

Edit: I just posted it in a new thread so that more people will notice it.

 

Sure thing man, and you do the same with Boleh. I aim to raise awareness on this subject matter and you seem to be as well. People are entitled to their privacy, even if they're not doing anything interesting with it, and they should seize it.

 

I was just trying to add in some more VPN providers is all, I did not investigate any of them...

One thing, I can't remember if it was discussed here or not in this thread, but something people need to really consider here, especially if you are looking for security and privacy with the VPN you are wanting to use...

Pay attention to all these VPN providers out there with all these servers around the world...

1. How do most of them get these servers? Answer; they just go to any ordinary hosting company that hosts servers and place their VPN software on it and that's bad.

2. With these VPN providers many of them might just be doing this also cloud based as well and that's also bad.

3. Do they really own the hardware, also where the servers are located, is it a part of their business or they're just renting servers through a hosting company?

Most of the VPN providers you see listing servers all over the world are going to simply use some hosting company and this is not exactly what you'd call the type of security we are discussing on this forum, looking for QUALITY VPN providers!

So for those of you really looking for a VPN Provider for security and privacy reasons you're going to want to make sure you keep this information in the back of your head to remember.

I'll bet you for those that are concerned about their security, which I'm guessing most of you are, otherwise you would not be on Wilders, you'll probably need to go with smaller VPN companies that actually own and control everything, that will most likely be, real security professionals, not just some company going out renting servers and putting up a VPN service, that's total BS...

On the subject of providers, I came across an interesting article;

http://apcmag.com/targeting-filter-vpn-providers-practice-aussie-accents.htm

vpnsecure.me looks interesting...


Cheers

 

I have to say, when I was reading your post the first company that came to mind was StrongVPN. They had an enormous list of servers, but... you had to pay for some "deluxe" package to get them. And on top of that had to pay extra $ for switches. It looked pretty suspect to me. And the fact that they are US based didn't help matters.

They were the first company I stumbled upon, because they are so highly advertised, and they've been around for so long. On the surface they looked really good, but after digging deeper I realized it was a facade.

 

Going back to the Swedish VPNs, I found something really good that I did not realize before.

Portlane a Swedish company offering a list of services along with VPN, through Anonine, was one that I stumbled past not realizing this;

http://www.portlane.com/en/services/anonymous_vpn

This is one VPN service I am going to really look at, now this is a company worth considering...


Cheers

P.S. Looking back at BolehVPN, I'm not really sure where they stand in regards to security and privacy for a VPN, it seems like they are just targeting P2P as their market for a VPN, so any concerns on security and privacy I'd be sure to pick their brains...

 

Hey DasFox, thank you for your feedback on our service.

You are right in that we started out as a P2P focused service but we aim to cater for different users and privacy is also our concern.

For full security our FullyRouted options offer full encryption options while retaining the speed that we put a strong emphasis on. No logs are kept on any of our VPN servers and key authentication is all independent from each other without any communication with our customer database (used to track payments).

We understand that there is a niche market for more privacy conscious people that have multiple hops and supporting full anonymous payments, but we aim to have a nice balance between convenience and anonymity. Free services such as TOR also eat into this space and we feel that with the increase of privacy, it would pose an unacceptable drop in speed.

In a nutshell, yes we are a privacy service that aims to balance speed and security and after some discussion with my partner, we decided to stick to our strengths rather than transform our business model into a very different one. We ask ourselves, what sort of security would an average VPN user require? What does our average customer value more, multiple hops or a better response time when using the VPN? Our average user I would hazard a guess is someone at home who perhaps posts some politically sensitive material, wants to torrent in peace, access blocked/censored content or simply hide their tracks on the net. Not someone who trades military secrets (and if so, why the heck are you putting privacy in the hands of a 3rd party that you have no supervisory powers?).

At the end of the day, as with any third party privacy provider, their word is all you've got. How do you know they do not log? How do you know that they would not crumble under legal pressure? By the time you find out whether these representations are true, it'll be too late anyway. Whether you're a datacenter owner, or a provider that merely rents servers this point is still valid. For example, if you were a datacenter owner that was forced under legal pressure to give access to some of your servers or shut down your entire datacenter, which would you choose? They too are subject to the laws of their countries and should they run any other business alongside their VPN service, it is more likely than not it would make sense to sacrifice their reputation on privacy to preserve their datacenter unless their sole business is internet privacy and confidentiality in which case they will be also be location limited and will command a huge premium (cue Bahnhof ala Wikileaks).

A good analogy is as follows, when you choose to put a lock on your front door of your house, do you go for a strongroom type of door, or a good reliable lock? There will always be people who will require the strongroom security but most people will get by with reasonable security with the lock and the convenience it provides. We are your reliable lock people. We're not the most secure, but that doesn't mean we are weak or that we don't care about security. It is a big concern but not our only concern. The point is to make it not worthwhile to pursue.

We however recognize the growing number of our customers who subscribe to us for privacy and security and therefore are exploring anonymous payment options and increased encryption but we need to see how this fits in into our payment system.

 

Welcome Reuben, now this is what I call a VPN, someone that takes the time and hops on board a forum and participates to let people know about their business.


THANKS and THUMBS UP to BolehVPN

 

Wow !!! what a long post !!

 

What post?

And please let's keep this VPN post on topic and not troll...


THANKS

 

I read bryanjoe's comment as an acknowledgement of bolehvpn's thoughtful observations.

 

bryanjoe's comment tells us nothing about the state of mind when he posted it, it can simply be interpreted many ways...

I interpret this as trolling when you leave a comment open to suggestion, after all what is wrong with simply closing it, so it leaves no room for doubt?

If you mean well then don't leave your comments open for interpretation, say what you mean, otherwise this is just trolling to some people...

This below certainly looks better;

Wow !!! what a long post !! Thanks a lot BolehVPN!!

Ok let's please not go overboard on this and start several posts of debate on the subject...


THANKS